Best Ravenloft Modules?

[NeoTiamat]

Basically a question I thought I'd toss out to the public here and see what response it gets.

What are, in your opinion, the best pre-made adventures modules for Ravenloft?

To define terms, Best is taken to be as the most successful. What adventure truly exhibits the gothic horror that is Ravenloft? What adventure makes your players get involved in the story, care about the characters involved? What adventure gets you excellent results, but doesn't force you to go crazy trying to manage fifty different elements.

Basically, Best can mean either most successful, inherently interesting, appealing to players, or simply extremely cost-efficient in terms of DM effort to player satisfaction.

Likewise, while I say pre-made, if some adventures need just a little tweaking to get them to work perfectly, mention that as well.

Also, this is open to all modules that can be run in Ravenloft. While for obvious reasons, those specifically designed for RL will be the most common, if you think there is an utterly perfect scenario somewhere else (Heroes of Horror perhaps), it can apply as well.

No length limit on the modules. It can be just a glorified random encounter (albeit an excellent one), or it can be a miniature campaign like the Evil Eye.

So what have been the best modules for the forum goers here?

[Joël of the FoS]

Evil Eye is perhaps the best thing out there - as it sets the basics on which I've established my campaign:

- it's not a dungeon crawl;
- interesting roleplay encounters
- PC make all (most) of their choices;
- and best of all: lots of room to add your own ideas and campaign focus.

As you said, it's a mini campaign in itself.

Read Ron's journal, or mine, and you will see what I mean

Joël

[Charney]

I'd have to go with House of Strahd

It's the ultimate horror adventure: entering a vampire castle.

It doesn't have too many subplots detracting players to a point where they don't know what's going on anymore. You can focus on one thing, using the castle as best as you can to scare the PCs.

It's simple and straightfoward without being too simplistic (thanks to the backstory we all know and love).

But mind that I only ran 6 modules (Feast of Goblyns, Bleak House, Requiem, and two others not set in Ravenloft).

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Gotta agree with Joel. Evil Eye, and then everything else can only hope to be a distant second. But rounding out my personal top 5 would be:

(in no particular order)
Night of the Walking Dead
Feast of Goblyns (with substantial rework)
Castles Forlorn (if I ever dare to try running it.)
Bleak House

[NeoTiamat]

Why?

I'd like to avoid a simple top five list. If you name something, tell me why is it good.

It does seem that the Evil Eye is considered the best RL Module. Not exactly surprising, one must admit.

Also, what reworks would you advise in Feast of the Goblyns?

[Luke Fleeman]

Castles Forlorn is great because it is so strange and the PCs really need to work to figure out what is going on.

My favorite is actually out of Book of Crypts: Blood in Moondale.

I certainly like Hour of the Knife. Despite some weird errors, I think Circle fo Darkness is a fun one too.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Sorry for my brevity... here's some elaboration:

The Evil Eye - as Joel said, the hugeness and detail of it all, and the unconventional setting, along with lots of room for DM elaboration, and an unconventional major villian. (*)

Night of the Walking Dead - along similar lines, it's a great example of a non-dungeon crawl adventure, which is where Ravenloft shines. Also very atmospheric and easy to adapt to any level.

Feast of Goblyns - the rework I refered to mainly comes down to finding a better cover story for Akriel, and also dumping a lot of the dungeon crawl, some of which is just bizarre for the sake of bizarre. The best parts are in the atmosphere of the land (very different from the darkness you'd expect in Ravenloft, until you look closer) and the memorable locations: Dominiani's asylum, the Old Kartakan Inn... (*)

Castles Forlorn - incredibly daring in its scope. while it does have aspects of a dungeon crawl, it's a very good one, with an incredibly detailed backstory, and the mind-boggling time-travel twist.

Bleak House - Once again, the sheer different-ness appeals to me. It's a more role-playing oriented module than most, and involves the greatest hero of the setting. The asylum part is completely unlike anything I've seen in a module, and the haunted house part is one of the best executed and most flavorful in a long line of Ravenloft haunted houses.

(*I've already written much more on FoG and TEE (and how I altered them) in the review section of this site... so I won't repeat it here.)

[HuManBing]

Circle of Darkness is good. I liked it because you get a real feeling of the theocracy's madness, and even so, you get to feel sympathy for Yagno Petrovna. Even as the head of a nation gone crazy, he's still preferable to the other alternative.

From the Shadows was a good adventure to capstone a campaign, especially if Azalin has long been a background enemy to the PCs. You'd need to make a few changes to it to reduce the apparent railroading, and I'd suggest redoing a lot of the castle's interior in greater details to drive home the darklord's true nature, but it can be very rewarding to take the fight to the puppet master once in a while.

Hour of the Knife had a good whodunnit plot to it, which would have been much better if one of my players had not played Spellfire. (There's a level 2 Monster card that basically gives that game away.)

[Luke Fleeman]

Hour of the Knife had a good whodunnit plot to it, which would have been much better if one of my players had not played Spellfire. (There's a level 2 Monster card that basically gives that game away.)

That won' t be too common; so few people played that game to begin with, and I doubt very many remember it now.

[kottakinge]

Modules that i enjoyed the must were:

-Dark of the moon, a very hard time for your PC and a nice but classical story.

-Saragoss island from islands of terror module, even if the DL sucks u can make a great story with all the factions who try to survive.

-Many shorts stories from "Chilling Tales", good for urban adventure (the ghost storie is one of the best)

-Evil eye is great but i think the main goal is a bit straight

-Howls in the night seems very nice (but i not yet played it)

Enjoy!

[Jester of the FoS]

I'm personally fond of Bleak House due to the epic scale and implications without destroying a city or reshaping the Core.